GPT-5 Environmental Impact
OpenAI's next-gen flagship model
Energy per query
18.4 Wh
61x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)
CO2 per query
8.0 g
US East (Virginia) grid (450 gCO₂/kWh)
Water per query
66 mL
~15 queries to fill 1 litre
Processing location
Azure / Multi-cloud
Provider
OpenAI
Category
Text / Chat
Grid carbon intensity
450 g CO2/kWh (25% renewable)
How does GPT-5 compare?
Ranked #140 of 166 models by energy per query
Head-to-head comparisons
Detailed Breakdown
Energy Consumption
GPT-5's per-query energy is genuinely uncertain, and the two best sources disagree by more than an order of magnitude. Jegham et al. (v6, 2025) measured ~18.35 Wh for a medium (~1000-token) response — a figure driven largely by GPT-5's default routing of many prompts through hidden reasoning steps. We report that benchmark measurement here as an upper-bound point estimate for a medium prompt. In contrast, the Joule 2026 production study (Oviedo et al.) analysed real fleet telemetry and found medians far lower — around 0.31 Wh per prompt, rising to ~3.91 Wh once test-time (reasoning) scaling is included — and concluded that benchmark-derived figures can overstate real production-fleet energy by roughly 4-20x. A typical GPT-5 prompt is therefore likely well below 18 Wh; we keep the peer-reviewed benchmark number as a stated-prompt-class upper bound while flagging this uncertainty prominently.
Power Source & Carbon
Runs across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud — OpenAI's first truly multi-cloud model. This allows some region optimisation for carbon efficiency.
Water Usage
At ~66 mL per query on the Jegham benchmark basis — a figure that reflects the extended reasoning routing this medium-prompt measurement captures. A typical production prompt likely uses far less water (see the energy note on production-fleet vs benchmark estimates).
About GPT-5
GPT-5 is a text and chat model from OpenAI, released in August 7, 2025. OpenAI's next-gen flagship model. Each query uses 18.4 Wh of energy and produces 8.0 g of CO₂. That's 61x the energy of a Google search — reflecting the computational demands of text and chat.
GPT-5 in Context
The efficiency alternative
Gemini Nano performs the same type of task using just 0.01 Wh per query — 100% less energy than GPT-5. For a user sending 25 queries per day, switching would save 167.3 kWh per year.
At global scale
With an estimated 10M+ daily users averaging 10 queries each, GPT-5 consumes roughly 1835 MWh of electricity per day — enough to power 61167 homes.
Your yearly GPT-5 footprint
At 25 queries per day, your annual GPT-5 usage consumes 167.4 kWh — a meaningful fraction of household electricity. That produces 73.0 kg of CO₂.
Key Insights
OpenAI GPT Family
How energy efficiency has evolved across versions.
What does your GPT-5 usage cost the planet?
Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use GPT-5.
Calculate My ComputeFrequently Asked Questions
How much energy does GPT-5 use per query?
Each GPT-5 query consumes approximately 18.4 Wh of energy. This is 61x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).
What is GPT-5's carbon footprint?
Based on the carbon intensity of Azure / Multi-cloud, each query produces approximately 8.0 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 450 g CO2/kWh with 25% renewable energy.
How much water does GPT-5 use?
Each query consumes approximately 66 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.
How does GPT-5 compare to a Google search?
A GPT-5 query uses 61x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while GPT-5 uses 18.4 Wh.
Technical Details
Architecture
Multimodal Transformer (next-gen)
Context window
256,000 tokens
Release date
2025-08-07
Open source
No
Training data cutoff
2025-06